COL.  GEORGE  WASHINGTON  FLOWERS 
MEMORIAL  COLLECTION 


DUKE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
DURHAM,  N.  C. 


PRESENTED  BY 

W.  W.  FLOWERS 


[published  by  the  democratic  congressional  committee.] 

 o  

ON  RELATIOx\S  BETWEEN  THE  WHITE  AND 
COLORED  PEOPLE  OP  THE  SOUTH. 

S  Jr^  IB  H !  C!  jE3I 

OF 

HON.  CHAS.  E.  HOOKER, 

delivered 

!N  THE  UNITED  STATES  HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES, 
■  JTrnSTB    15,  1876. 

Mr.  HOOKER.    I  know,  Mr.  Chairman,  how  difficult  it  is  on  a  topic  which  is  not 
immediately  before  the  House  to  command  its  attention  ;  and  indeed  I  am  somewhat 
averse  ever  to  speak  in  this  House  upon  any  question  except  the  particular  matter 
.which  may  be  under  consideration.    But  I  will  avail  myself  of  the  latitude  of  debate 
hich  is  allowed  in  Committee  of  the  Whole  upon  any  proposition  which  may  be  under 
^nsideration  to  correct  some  views  and  opinions  which  have  been  expressed  in  the 
tblic  press  and  elsewhere  in  regard  to  a  question  upon  which  it  was  my  purpose  to  ad- 
ress  some  remarks  to  the  House  when  the  committee  charged  with  the  investigation  of 
le  affairs  of  the  Freedman's  Bank  and  Trust  Company,  of  which  my  friend,  Judge 
IpuGLAS,  of  Virginia,  is  the  Chairman,  should  have  made  its  report.    I  do  it  now  be- 
use  I  think  it  improbable  that  that  report  will  be  made  at  an  early  day  ;  and  in  order 
correct  some  erroneous  impressions  which  have  been  made  by  the  testimony  taken 
.  fore  the  committee  which  has  been  organized  by  the  co-ordinate  branch  of  the 
tional  Legislature,  and  which  is  now  in  session  in  the  capital  of  my  own  State.  And 
do  it,  sir,  because  I  think  that  the  truth  of  history  needs  vindication,  and  that  the 
"ople  whom  I  have  the  honor  to  represent  here,  in  connection  with  my  CDlleagues,  have 
ot  been  understood  in  reference  to  this  matter.  . 

i  It  was  a  very  difficult  question  to  determine,  Mr.  Chairman,  when  the  war  closed 
hat  should  be  the  relation,  the  natural,  normal,  and  necessary  relation,  between  those 
f  the  Southern  States  who  had  without  any  wish,  or  will,  or  thought,  or  fault  certd,mly 
of  their  own  been  born  masters,  and  those  who  equally  without  any  wish,  or  will,  or 
thought,  or  fault  of  their  own  been  born  slaves.  The  result  of  the  civil  cor'«.est  changed 
as  it  were  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye  the  relations  borne  between  4, 000,000  of  people  in 
the  South  to  the  Caucasian  race  that  had  inhabited  it  from  the  days  of  tlie  Revolution 
down  to  the  present  time.    And  it  is  no  wonder,  sir,  that  whenever  tliat  condition  of 
affairs  had  arisen  in  any  State — from  Massachusetts,  which  was  the  fir^t  to  manumit  the 
slaves,  down  to  New  Jersey,  which  was  the  last  to  manumit  under  an  apprentice  sys 
tern— I  say  that  it  is  no  wonder  when  this  condition  of  affairs  sprur-g  up  in  each  St"', 
that  the  legislators  and  the  statesmen  of  those  States  felt  that  thev  had  to  de-' 
question  difficult  of  solution  and  proper  adjustment.    There  has  b^en 
through  the  public  press  the  evidence  taken  before  this  committee,  ^ 
by,  Mr.  Chairman,  most  extraordinarily  constituted— constituted  ^ 
the  Legislature,  not  a  joint  committee  of  this  House  and  the  <' 

of  the  Senate,  proposing  to  sit  in  judgment  upon  the  action  ^  ro 


f 


the  election  of  its  Legislature  and  its  public  officers  ;  and  even  further,  Mr.  Chairman, 
in  violation  of  a  right  inherent  in  this  House,  and  which  until  the  resolution  appointing 
that  committee  was  presented  to  the  other  branch  of  the  national  Legislature  had  never 
been  questioned,  that  each  House  was  the  judge  of  the  qualifications  of  its  own  mem- 
bers. 

There  have  been  many  strains  upon  the  Constitution  within  the  last  fifteen  years. 
There  have  been  many  infractions  of  its  provisions.  But  it  was  left,  sir,  to  the  first 
session  of  the  Forty-fourth  Congress  to  present  to  the  country  the  strange  and  startling 
proposition  that  the  Senate  possessed  the  power  to  constitute  a  committee  to  determine 
the  competency  of  the  elections  of  the  sitting  members  of  this  House.  Suppose  we 
should  reverse  the  picture,  Mr.  Chairman,  and  constitute  a  committee  of  the  House  of 
Eepresentatives  to  ascertain  whether  the  Senator  from  Delaware  or  the  Senator  from 
Indiana  had  his  seat  properly  in  the  other  branch  of  the  Legislature.  It  is  not  a  more 
startling  proposition,  so  far  as  constitutional  infraction  is  concerned,  than  is  that  which 
was  embraced  in  the  resolution  under  which  this  committee  is  now  sitting  at  the  capital 
of  my  own  State. 

But  the  public  mind  had  probably  been  prepared  for  measures  as  extreme  as  this.  It 
had  been  prepared  for  them  because  there  had  been  a  strain  upon  the  Constitution,  not 
in  the  interests  of  the  country  and  of  peace  and  of  order,  but  that  strain  upon  the 
Constitution  had  been  in  the  interest  of  party  for  the  domination  of  party  5  and  the  ap- 
peals that  were  made  in  order  to  secure  these  infractions  were  made,  not  that  peace 
and  law  and  order  and  the  attendandant  prosperity  which  go  along  with  them  should 
be  the  legitimate  inheritance  of  the  country  aftei:  ten  years  had  elapsed  since  the  close 
of  the  war,  but  they  were  made  in  order  that  there  might  be  continued  the  domination 
of  the  party  in  power. 

When  the  proposition  was  first  presented  to  the  consideration  of  the  country,  as  to 
what  should  be  the  status  of  the  colored  r»oe  M^ho  had  been  freed  by  the  results  of  the 
war,  and  who  stood  at  its  conclusion  by  the  adoption  of  the  amendments  to  the  Consti- 
tution upon  the  same  plane  of  civil  rights  and  equality  before  the  law — when  that  ques- 
tion was  first  presented  there  was  much  debate  as  to  what  was  the  proper  course  to  be 
pursued.  A  distinguished  gentleman  from  one  of  the  Western  States  made  the  propo- 
sition, as  was  charged,  in  a  debate  in  1871  between  Governor  Stevenson,  of  Kentucky, 
and  himself,  that  it  was  necessary  that  a  period  of  probation  of  from  seven  to  ten  years 
should  be  allowed  in  order  to  qualify  the  colored  man  for  the  intelligent  exercise  of  the 
suffrage.  That  proposition,  was  charged,  I  say,  in  that  discussion  between  the  Senator 
from  Indiana  and  the  Senator  from  Kentucky,  in  1871,  as  the  reports  will  show.  Such 
a  proposition,  however,  never  came  from  any  Southern  State.  On  the  contrary,  there 
was  no  disposition  on  the  part  of  any  Southern  State,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  to  deny  the 
legitimate  results  of  the  war,  and  the  bestowal  of  citizenship  and  the  right  of  the  ballot 
on  the  colored  race.  It  is  true  that  many  of  us  doubted,  and  the  most  sagacious  men 
of  the  Republican  party  doubted,  whether  they  were  prepared  to  emerge  at  once  from 
a  condition  of  slavery,  without  intelligence,  to  a  condition  of  freedom  and  the  exercise, 
intelligently,  of  the  ballot.  But  such  was  the  will  of  the  nation,  and  more,  such  was 
the  will  of  all  the  Southern  States.    Mississippi  adopted  it  by  her  own  ordinance. 

They  have,  then,  given  the  colored  man  the  ballot  ever  since  the  war  closed,  during 
tiie  last  ten  years  ;  and  I  predicted  in  Mississippi  last  fall  that  the  first  proposition 
which  would  be  made  to  tne  country  to  take  that  ballot  from  him,  or  to  limit  its  exer- 
cise, would  spring  not  from  the  Southern  States,  but  would  spring  from  the  Republi- 
can party  who  had  already  given  the  power  of  the  ballot  to  800,000  citizens,  and  thus 
■ncreased  to  that  extent  the  ratio  of  representation  in  this  Hall,  and  the  power  of  the 
^^^*hern  States  in  the  electoral  college. 

I  ha.y^^o.Q,YGe]y  taken  my  seat  upon  this  floor  when  a  message  from  the  President 
came  to  th.j^Q^y  q^^^  i]^q  Senate,  recommending,  among  other  measures,  that  all  per- 
sons who  C0.4  jiQ^  j.gad  and  write  in  1890  should  be  deprived  of  the  ballot,  coupled, 
it  is  true,  wiU^  sickly  proviso  that  it  should  not  apply  to  any  one  whose  illiteracy  now 
disqualifies  hiu  g^^^  ^^j.,  that  was  a  verification  of  the  prediction  I  had  made,  that  so 
far  from  any  Sct}jgj,j^  g^-^i-g  proposing  to  restrict,  limit,  or  take  away  the  ballot  from 
the  colored  race,|^g  proposition  came  in  the  shape  of  a  recotnmendation  jrom  the 
P-esident  ol  the'^-^g^j  States  himself,  for  no  man  can  conceal  from  himself  that  that 
'  1  class  ol  Inple  in  reference  to  whom  the  recommendation  was  designed  and 
"^Bply.  vVhat  I  have  just  said  is  sustained  by  a  debate  which  occurred  in 
-  ^  '  ,■  -  ,  "'the  last  session  of  Congress,  when  I  was  nothere,  when  the  Force 
"'r-}]  ■^'.■a>  :atrodvc8  .^^j  members  in  this  Hall  and  in  the  Senate  were  appealed  to  by 
eve:-;  ::enl:n  '"^^  pride  and  every  incentive  to  the  accumulation  of  party  power 


3  ^o.3f 

to  sustain  that  measure  ten  years  after  the  war  had  closed.  The  organ  of  the  Admin- 
istration, the  organ  of  the  President,  the  organ  of  the  Republican  party  then  and  now 
in  this  city,  asserted  that  the  passage  of  that  measure,  which  was  designed,  to  restore 
military  power  in  the  South,  and  military  commissions  to  try  questions  of  civil  right, 
was  necessary,  not  in  the  interest  of  peace  and  order,  but  in  the  interest  of  the  Repub- 
lican party.  Tiiat  sentiment  resulted  in  words  which  I  will  read  in  a  moment,  in  a 
speech  made  on  the  27th  of  February,  not  by  a  Democrat,  but  by  a  Republican  then 
and  now  But  when  that  measure  Avas  before  Congress,  feeling  that  t  here  were  certain 
great  principles  of  American  freedom.  American  liberty,  and  human  freedom,  and  hu- 
man rghts  the  world  over  that  were  dearer  than  party  ties,  and  which  constitutions  and 
governments  were  simply  designed  to  be  the  exponents  and  protectors  of.  a  gentleman 
who  then  held  his  place  on  this  floor,  as  distinguished  in  his  advocacy  of  the  Republi- 
can party  as  any  man,  used  these  remarkable  words  in  relation  to  it,  and  I  allude  to 
Mr.  Havdey,  of  Connecticut.  When  that  bill  (the  force  bill)  was  under  consideration 
he  described  his  own  partisan  position,  and  said  : 

I  have  been  a  radical  abolitionist  from  my  earliest  days.  I  began  on  reaching  my  majority  as 
a  member  of  the  free-soil  party.  I  fought  in  it  with  all  my  might  until  the  Repui^lican  p  irty  v/as 
formed,  and  I  joined  that  party-  I  went  into  the  service  of  the  Union  the  first  A.xy  of  tlie  war,  nnd 
I  staid  in  it  until  I  was  honor  ibly  discharged  after  the  close.  I  have  work-.-i  with  the  Hei)abli- 
can  party  for  its  most  radical  measures,  the  thirteenth,  fourteenth,  and  fifteenth  amendments  in- 
cluded.  So  my  record  on  that  subject  is  tolerably  clear  and  radical. 

But  I  am  coming  to  a  time  now  when  I  must  seriously  consider  whether  I  shall  go  on  with  some 
of  my  radical  associates.  I  am  compelled  in  a  measure  to  pare  company  with  them,  but  I  dislike 
to  do  it  A  very  few  minutes  will  suSice  to  tell  why  I  must  take  another  path  this  once.  I  cannot 
agree  to  put  any  further  or  greater  powers  into  the  hands  of  any  President  of  the  United  States. 
I  think  the  existing  laws  upon  the  statute-book  are  strong  enough  for^the  preservation  of  all  the 
rights  guaranteed  by  the  Federal  G-overnment,  full  and  strong  enough  for  the  fulfillment  and  dis- 
charge of  all  the  obligations  resting  upon  that  Government. 

This  is  the  evidence  offered  by  a  republican,  and  in  addition  to  that,  on  that  very 
morning  the  organ  of  the  Administration  and  of  the  Republican  party  said  in  reference 
to  this  force  bill,  which  drove  Mr.  Hawley  from  the  ranks  of  his  own  party,  radical  as 
he  was,  that — 

The  passage  of  the  bill— 

.Alluding  to  the  force  bill — 

is  required  to  preserve  to  the  Republican  party  the  electoral  vote  of  the  Southern  States. 

Remember  that  if  the  Democrats  carry  all  the  Southern  States,  as  they  will  if  the  White  League 
usurpation  in  some  of  them  is  not  suppressed,  it  will  require  only  fifty  democratic  electoral  votes 
from  the  Northern  States  to  elect  a  democratic  President.   This  is  a  liberal  estimate. 

The  evidence,  then,  is  that  that  measure  was  inaugurated  and  designed,  not  for  the 
interests  of  the  country,  not  because  it  was  required  to  restore  peace  and  order,  but  it 
was  done  in  order  that  the  Southern  States  might  be  held  in  the  leash  of  party,  for 
party  purposes,  and  for  party  domination. 

Now,  sir,  I  have  said  that  you  have  given  the  ballot  to  the  colored  people_  during 
the  first  ten  years  after  the  war  ;  you  did  it  by  amendments  to  the  Constitution, 
and  many  of  the  States  did  it  themselves.  You  have  given  them  the  ballot  for  ten 
years,  and  while  in  all  the  Southern  States  they  are  banded  together  as  sheep  in 
the  shambles  or  as  cattle  on  the  way  to  market,  they  have  voted  en  masse  in  favor  of 
the  republican  party,  and  so  long  as  this  could  be  done,  so  long  as  the  colored  vote 
could  be  utilized  in  favor  of  the  republican  party,  you  heard  no  proposition,  either 
from  the  President  or  from  anybody  else,  to  limit  his  exercise  of  the  ballot.  But  for 
one,  representing  a  large  portion  of  these  colored  people  in  my  district,  and  as  stand- 
ing here  pledged  to  see  that  all  their  rights  under  the  Constitution  and  under  the 
ordinance  of  the  convention  of  my  States  are  sustained,  I  here  enter  my  protest  against 
any  effort  to  limit  the  power  and  authority  which  you  have  already  given  ,  to  them, 
and  a  power  and  authority  which  you  have  given  to  the  Southern  States  by  extending 
the  ratio  of  representation.  These  rights  were  maintained  so  long  as  they  could  be 
utilized,  so  long  as  carpet-baggers  could  control  them— a  class  of  men  who  came  to  our 
country  for  the  purpose  of  running  the  State  governments,  and  who  are  very  pertinently 
described  by  that  good  and  philosophic  man  Mr.  Greeley,  when  he  had  been  to  Texas 
to  tell  the  people  there  "  what  he  knew  about  farming."  When  he  returned  to  New 
York  they  asked  him  the  question  if  what  was  reported  about  the  carpet-bagger  was 
true  His  response  was,  "  Yes,  gentlemen,  I  regret  to  say  to  you  that  he  is  a  mourn- 
ful fact,  and  the  attitude  in  which  i  have  most  generally  found  him  is  with  both  arms 
around  the  negro's  neck  and  both  hands  in  his  pocket."  [Laughter.] 

It  is  this  class  of  men  who  were  sent  there,  or  who  went  there  for  the  purpose  of 


4 

organizing  the  State  governments.  As  I  have  bad  occasion  to  say  elsewhere,  if  the 
terms  of  the  surrender  made  by  your  great  battling  generals  had  been  carried  out  in  good 
faith,  if  a  set  of  politicians  had  not  crept  into  the  halls  of  the  National  Legislature  and 
into  the  halls  of  the  State  Legislatures  who  believe  in  laws  engendered  in  hate,  you 
could  have  restored  real  peace,  and  the  prosperity  which  goes  v/ith  it  would  have  been 
established  in  those  States  long  ago.  But  this  class  of  men  were  sent  there.  I  do  not 
speak  my  own  opinion  or  speak  from  the  stand- point  of  any  democrat.  On  the  con- 
trary, there  sits  upon  this  floor  a  gentleman  whom  I  regret  is  not  now  in  his  seat,  who 
at  the  time  the  debate  was  going  on  gave  a  description  of  the  governments  of  the 
Southern  States  from  a  republican  stand-point.  I  allude  to  the  gentleman  from  Maine, 
[Mr  Hale.]  He  gave  a  description,  not  exactly  as  terse  and  dramatic  as  that  which 
Mr.  Greeley  gave,  but  generally  as  truthful  as  that,  and  here  is  what  he  said  in  the  last 
Congress  : 

For  the  last  few  years  the  infamy  and  disgrace  of  certain  Southern  States  governments  have  been  con- 
stantly on  the  increase.  There  have  been  corrupt  electors  and  corrupt  elections.  There  have  been  corrupt 
legislators  and  corrupt  legislation.  There  have  been  double  Legislatures,  double  Governors,  double 
Representatives  in  tins  Bouse,  and  double  Senators  year  by  year  in  manj^  State,*.  There  have  been  bad 
men  in  these  States  who  have  bought  power  by  wholesale  bribery  and  have  enriclied  themselves  at  the 
expense  of  the  people  by  peculation  or  o]:>en-handed  robberv.  Corruption  and  anarchy  have  occvpied 
and  possessed  these  unfortunate  States. 

Now  that  is  the  evidence  of  a  republican  as  to  the  character  of  the  governments  which 
had  grown  up  under  the  carpet-bag  administrations  in  the  South.  That  is  the  evidence 
of  a  gentleman  identified  in  all  his  political  relations  with  the  republican  party,  and  yet 
at  that  time  it  was  not  considered  necessary  that  either  branch  of  the  Legislature  should 
send  forth  a  committee  for  the  purpose  of  investigating  that  very  corruption  which  was 
admitted  by  a  prominent  republican  member  of  the  House  then  to  exist  in  the  Southern 
States.  But  now  that  the  colored  man  has  for  ten  years  exercised  the  right  of  the 
ballot  ;  now  that  the  colored  man  begins  to  understand  that  there  is  an  identity  of 
interest  between  himself  and  the  white  race  of  the  country;  now  that  they  understand 
that  when  I  come  here  if  I  make  good  laws  for  the  white  man  I  must  make  good  laws 
for  the  black  man,  and  when  I  make  bad  laws  for  the  white  man  I  make  bad  for  the 
black  man  ;  now  that  they  are  beginning,  in  obedience  to  the  great  mandate  of  the 
Master  of  the  universe,  to  earn  their  bread  by  the  sweat  of  their  face  ;  now  that  there 
is  quiet  and  peace,  and  that  the  natural  relations  between  labor  and  capital  are  estab- 
lished, the  proposition  comes  from  a  republican  President  that  he  ought  to  be  in  some 
way  deprived  of  his  ballot.  I  enter  my  protest  against  it.  He  is  now  beginning  to  be 
instructed  that  there  is  no  power  in  the  Federal  Government  to  maintain  the  four 
millions  of  his  race.  He  is  beginning  to  be  convinced  of  the  fact  that  he  must  work  for 
his  support  and  that  of  his  family,  and  when  he  does  that  he  knows  that  the  land  he 
cultivates,  the  animals  he  plows  his  land  with,  the  meat  and  bread  that  keep  body  and 
soul  together,  are  solely  derived  from  the  southern  people,  and  the  southern  man  has 
been  his  real  friend,  has  understood  his  character,  his  necessities,  and  wants  more  than 
any  northern  man,  be  he  a  democrat  or  a  republican.  I  enter  my  protest  against  his 
advancement  in  physical  well-being  being  made  a  political  question  ;  it  is  not  so,  and 
should  not  be  made  so. 

In  1875,  when  the  election  occurred  in  my  State,  the  platform  adopted  by  the  Demo- 
cratic and  Conservative  party  declared  for  perfect  equality  before  the  law  in  every  par- 
ticular. It  has  been  alleged  that  in  that  election  the  colored  man  did  not  act  freely  of 
his  own  accord  with  the  Democratic  party.  There  was  but  one  general  officer  voted  for 
in  that  election,  and  he  to  fill  a  vacancy  occasioned  by  the  resignation  of  the  treasurer 
of  the  State,  and  the  Conservative  candidate  was  elected  by  33,000  majority  ;  in  almost 
every  congressional  district  the  conservative  majorities  were  very  large,  but  there  are 
two  congressional  districts  which  have  sent  Republican  members  to  this  House,  and  one 
of  them  owes  his  election  and  .holds  his  seat  by  virtue  of  the  fact  that  every  Democrat 
in  his  district  voted  for  him,  and  while  they  sit  here  they  are  living  refutations  of  the 
slander  which  is  attempted  to  be  put  upon  the  white  people  of  the  State,  that  they 
banded  together  to  prevent  Republicans  from  being  elected  to  the  Halls  of  Congress. 

I  say  that  this  could  not  have  occurred  if  the  accusations  made  were  true.  If  the  power 
to  carry  it  out  exists  in  one  congressional  district  it  is  as  emphatic  in  another.  No  such 
state  of  things  exists  ;  on  the  contrary,  I  remember  very  well  that  on  the  27th  of  Octo- 
ber, 1875,  when  the  Conservative  and  Democratic  party  held  its  convention  and  gathered 
at  the  Capitol,  where  Governor  Ames  filled  the  executive  office,  there  were  present  there 
from  the  county  of  Hinds,  the  largest  tax-paying  county  in  the  State  before  the  war,  and 
probably  containing  more  colored  people  than  any  other  county  in  the  State,  a  proces- 
sion of  colored  men  from  that  county  who  passed  along  before  the  capitol.    One  of  the 


5 


judges  of  the  supreme  court  of  the  State  stood  by  me  on  the  pavement  and  saw  the  col- 
ored men  riding  through  the  capitol  with  the  Democratic  and  Conservative  banners 
borne  by  them,  and  he  then  said  to  me,  what  the  election  proved  to  be  true,  that  the 
back-bone  of  the  Republican  party  in  Mississippi  was  broken.  The  result  was  that  in 
the  county  of  Hinds,  the  capital  county,  the  county  where  Mr.  Ames  has  his  official  office, 
where  the  United  States  marshal  holds  his  official  position,  the  county  where  the  United 
States  court  is  held  and  appoints  the  supervisors  of  election,  a  county  which  usually 
gives  2,500  Republican  majority,  was  carried  by  the  Democrats  by  1,58C). 

And  who  were  the  men  elected  ?  Prominent  among  the  men  who,  sacrificing  personal 
interest  and  private  gain,  stood  forward  bearing  the  banner  of  that  party,  was  that  dis- 
tinguished veteran  in  the  Whig  ranks  who  all  his  life  had  been  a  Whig.  Hon.  Amos  R. 
Jackson,  and  side  by  side  with  him  stood  George  W.  Harper  and  Oliver  Clifton  and 
Marye  Dabney  and  Captain  Jones,  all  their  lives  old-line  Whigs.  Everywhere  throughout 
the  State  former  party  distinctions  and  political  differences  were  merged  in  the  common 
desire,  and  I  may  say  in  the  common  determination,  that  these  corrupt  governments, 
such  as  Mr.  Hale  described  as  having  existed  in  Mississippi,  and  which  had  swelled  its 
governmental  expenses  from  $360,000  to  over  $1,250,000  annually,  should  cease  to 
exist 

I  take  this  county  as  one  just  and  proper  to  be  taken  as  an  evidence  of  what  was  done 
I  assert  the  fact,  and  it  cannot  be  contradicted,  that  in  the  lower  part  of  that  county  the 
colored  men  not  only  voted  the  Democratic  ticket,  but  they  united  in  the  formation  of  a 
club,  and  came  over  to  the  conservative  party  almost  en  masse,  not  because  force  or  in 
timidation  or  fraud  was  applied  to  them,  but  because  they  became  satisfied  that  the 
promises  which  the  Republican  party  had  been  making  to  them  so  long  ;  promises  which 
had  been  made  to  the  ear  but  broken  to  the  hope  ;  promises  which  the  Government  had 
not  the  power  to  fulfill,  much  less  they ;  promises  which  included  the  idea  that  some  ex- 
traordinary advantage  should  be  given  to  the  colored  men  over  the  other  people,  and 
which,  of  course,  they  had  not  the  power  to  carry  out ;  the  promise,  for  instance,  of  forty 
acres  of  land  and  a  mule  to  each  one  of  them— they  became  satisfied  that  these  promises 
were  all  delusive  ;  and  of  their  own  accord  and  voluntarily  they  entered  into  that  can- 
vass and  cast  their  ballots  side  by  side  with  the  old  white  people  of  the  county,  satisfied 
that  there  was  a  common  destiny  for  them  all,  and  that  what  was  for  the  prosperity  of  the 
one  was  for  the  prosperity  of  the  other. 

It  has  been  said  that  fraud  and  force  and  intimidation  existed  in  that  State  during  that 
canvass.  Sir,  in  the  district  which  I  have  the  honor  to  represent  there  was  but  one 
county  that  cast  its  votes  against  me  ;  and  there  was  one  county  that  gave  me  every  vote 
within  it  except  two,  though  there  were  probably  a  great  many  colored  men  in  that 
county. 

There  was  one  county  lying  on  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi  River  which  I  visited.  It 
was  very  largely  a  colored  county.  I  addressed  a  mixed  auditory  of  white  and  colored 
people  in  the  day-time.  At  night  I  retired  to  the  residence  of  a  friend  some  distance 
from  the  village,  with  no  expectation  of  speaking  again.  That  night  there  was  an  or- 
ganization of  colored  men  of  that  neighborhood,  the  president  of  the  organization  being 
a  colored  man;  and  to  my  surprise,  as  I  was  about  preparing  to  retire,  a  committee  of 
colored  men  waited  upon  me  and  asked  me  to  address  that  audience  of  colored  men.  I 
present  this  fact  to  the  House  and  to  the  country  as  an  evidence  that  the  assertion  is  not 
true,  but  is  a  libel  upon  both  races,  that  we  have  hostile  feelings  one  toward  the  other. 

It  has  been  sometimes  said  that  the  white  people  of  the  Southern  States  were  particu- 
larly hostile  not  only  to  the  colored  man,  but  also  to  the  white  men  of  the  Republican 
party  who  came  down  there  for  the  purpose  of  taking  part  in  our  election.  Well,  sir,  I 
can  only  say  that  we  have  in  Mississippi  a  record  upon  that  subject  of  which  we  are  not 
ashamed.  In  the  days  of  our  prosperity,  in  the  days  when  we  were  a  power  in  the  land, 
in  the  days  when  our  people  were  wealthy,  who  of  all  the  men  of  Mississippi  received 
the  highest  honors  and,  distinction  of  our  people?  I  call  to  mind  just  now  that  grand  old 
man  John  Anthony  Quitman,  who  came  from  the  Knickerbocker  region  of  New  York, 
and  settled  among  us  years  ago.  He  was  advanced  to  the  highest  positions  in  our 
State— of  chancelor,  of  governor,  and  finally  of  Representative  upon  this  floor.  He  was 
a  northern  man. 

I  call  to  mind  that  gallant  old  veteran,  Charles  Clark,  yet  living  and  hobbling  about 
on  his  crutches.    He  came  from  the  banks  of  the  beautiful  Ohio. 

I  call  to  mind  that  great  and  gifted  genius  who  came  from  away  oflf  down  on  the 
eastern  shore  of  Maine,  the  gallant,  eloquent,  and  noble  Prentiss,  who  came  as  came 
those  others  and  hundreds  like  them  honestly  to  lend  their  bone  and  sinew  and  muscle 
and  blood  and  brain  to  build  up  the  waste  places  of  our  country,  and  to  become  in 
deed  and  in  truth  part  and  parcel  of  us.    Whenever  men  have  come  there  for  that 


6 


purpose,  with  those  objects,  whether  from  the  East  or  from  the  West,  they  have  ever 
been  met  with  warm  hearts  and  open  arms. 

But  when  a  certain  class  of  men  have  come  down  there,  and  instead  of  ringing  the 
front-door  bell  have  stolen  in  at  the  kitchen  door  and  attempted  to  breed  bad  blood 
(and  there  are  yet  those  who  wonld  do  it)  between  the  old  white  people  of  the  country 
and  the  old  slaves,  now  freedmen — when  they  come  with  this  purpose  and  insidiously 
endeavor  to  instill  into  the  minds  and  hearts  of  the  colored  people  hostility  and  oppo- 
sition to  the  whites,  I  say  now,  as  1  have  said  upon  the  soil  of  Mississippi,  "The 
back  of  our  hands  to  this  class  of  people  forever,"  and  our  people  say  so. 

I  may  refer  as  an  illustration,  and  I  take  him  as  I  took  the  county  of  Hinds  as  the 
best  illustration,  I  refer  to  a  distinguished  general  who  recently  has  been  governor  of 
that  State  ;  he  came  there  a  military  man.  When  you  sent  your  committee  down  to 
investigate  certain  disturbances,  for  which  in  the  sight  of  man  and  God  he  was  proba- 
bly more  responsible  than  any  other  living  man,  when  you  sent  your  committee  there 
for  the  purpose  of  making  an  investigation,  I  chanced  for  the  first  time  to  see  him. 

The  inquiry  was  made  of  him,  "  Governor  Ames,  when  did  you  first  determine  to 
settle  in  Mississippi?"  His  reply  was,  "November,  1869."  "  When  were  you  elect- 
ed United  States  Senator?"  His  reply  was,  "In  1870 — about  January  or  February." 
The  third  inquiry  was,  "  Who  signed  your  credentials?"  The  reply  was,  "  I  signed 
them  myself."  [Laughter.] 

Mr.  COOK,  And  his  colleague  told  him  he  had  not  lived  long  enough  in  the  State 
to  get  his  shirt  washed.  [Laughter.] 

Mr.  HOOKER.  He  came,  however,  to  the  United  States  Senate,  a  body  for  which, 
Mr.  Chairman,  since  I  first  read  the  memorable  lines  of  Mr.  Calhoun  in  speaking  of 
it,  I  have  entertained  the  profoundest  respect  and  regard.  For  Mr.  Calhoun  said 
"  that,  it  was  the  favorite  of  the  Constitution,"  where  Delaware,  with  her  80,000  inhab- 
itants, stood  upon  an  equality  with  New  York,  with  her  4,000,000,  ay,  and  more  ;  that 
upon  a  proposition  to  change  the  equality  of  sovereign  representation  in  the  Senate, 
Delaware,  the  smallest  State  in  the  Union,  with  but  one  Representative  upon  this  floor 
and  two  Senators  in  the  other  branch,  Delaware  had  the  power  anii  the  right  and  the 
authority  under  the  Constitution  to  put  her  veto  upon  the  acts  of  all  the  other  people 
and  all  the  other  States. 

He  (Governor  AmesJ)  came  to  that  body.  I  have  always  thought  when  one  was  ad- 
vanced to  the  high  dignity  of  representing  a  sovereign  State  he  should  rise  to  the  level 
of  the  plane  of  the  lofty  duties  which  devolved  upon  him  ;  that  he  should  forget  party 
and  party  spirit ;  that  he  should  forget  there  was  a  majority  m  his  favor  and  a  minority 
which  voted  against  him.  I  hold  to  the  doctrine,  too,  that  is  true  of  Representatives 
here,  that  a  Representative  when  elected  here,  as  a  Senator  when  elected  to  the  other 
branch  of  the  national  Legislature,  should  feel  that  he  represented  the  whole  people, 
the  minority  who  did  not  think  him  fit  for  the  position  as  well  as  the  majority  who 
elected  him. 

When  this  distinguished  gentleman  was  advanced  to  this  position,  in  a  debate  which 
occurred  in  1871,  ha  spoke  the  sentiments  of  the  carpet-baggers  of  the  South.  When 
in  thfe  debate  upon  that  occasion  he  stood  upon  the  floor  of  the  Senate,  the  question 
being  the  conferring  of  the  franchise  upon  the  colored  men,  he  said,  and  I  quote  his 
precise  language : 

It  is  to  be  desired  that  this  question  of  negro  suffrage  shall  not  be  settled  by  those  who  believe  him  unfit 
for  citizenship  and  those  who,  as  his  masters,  would  have  sold  him  to  be  cut  up  on  the  butcher's  block 
had  such  a  disposition  of  his  body  brought  in  a  few  more  AoWars.— Congressional  Record,  first  session 
Forty-second  Congress,  page  569. 

That  was  the  sentiment  uttered  by  this  chief  of  the  carpet-baggers,  and  I  haved 
always  replied  to  it  by  saying  that  the  man  whose  heart  could  have  conceived,  or  who  se 
mind  could  have  thought  such  a  thought,  or  whose  lips  coul4  have  uttered  it  only 
proved  that  if  he  had  been  there  himself  he  would  have  done  what  he  suspected  others 
capable  of  doing.  I  regret  to  say  that  that  sentiment,  which  was  a  libel  upon  every  south- 
ern white  man  whom  he  represented  and  whom  he  should  have  represented,  for  it  em- 
braced them  all— I  regret  to  say  there  was  no  Senator  from  Mississippi  to  rise  on  '^he 
floor  of  the  Senate  Chamber  in  vindication  of  the  slandered  honor  and  fair  fame  of 
that  State.  But  I  rejoice  to  say  there  was  a  Senator  who,  though  probably  he  had 
never  set  his  foot  on  Mississippi  soil,  or  upon  Mississippi  soil  gazed  into  the  lace  of  a 
Mississippi  man  or  a  Mississippi  woman,  that  there  was  a  Senator  there,  large  hearted 
and  great  minded,  who  rose  in  his  place,  although  he  came  from  the  far-off  State  of 
Ohio,  (I  allude  to  the  great-minded,  catholic- spirited  Thurman,  of  Ohio)— I  rejoice 
there  was  a  Senator  who  did  rise  in  his  place  and  say : 


7 


Now,  sir,  if  you  want  the  people  of  the  Sooth  to  be  orderly,  give  them  good  goyernment.  Let  them 
govern  themselves  according  to  the  aatare  and  spirit  of  our  free  institutions:  let  the  intelligence  of  th# 
country  have  fair  play  :  let  the  honesty  and  economy  that  everybody  will  admit  existed  in  those  States 
before  the  civil  war,  whatever  fault-  they  may  have  had,  once  more  take  place:  let  mere  adventurerslrie 
tire  to  the  baekgrround  or  hide  tnem'?elves  in  the  holes  from  which  they  came:  let  once  more  the  peo  e-1 
feel  that  they  have  a  Constitution  that  will  he  enforced,  law-;  that  they  respect:  and  once  raore  you  vr\>\ 
have  peace  and  order  there  as  elsewhere. — Congressional  Record,  Forty-Second  Congress,  page  192. 

That  was  the  reply  which  had  to  be  made  by  the  Senator  of  a  distant  State  in  vindi- 
cation of  the  white  people  of  Mississippi  against  the  slander  charged  upon  them  by 
their  carpet-bag  Senator. 

But  I  now  say,  sir,  that  he  who  asserts,  whether  he  be  Governor  Ames  or  anybody 
else,  that  there  exists  in  the  heart  of  that  white  people  a  disposition  to  deny  the  right 
of  free  suffrage  to  the  colored  man,  and  I  say  more,  that  he  who  asserts  that  the  col- 
ored man,  I  mean  the  great  body  of  the  laboring  colored  men  of  the -land,  the  bone 
and  sinew  and  muscle  that  come  into  contact  with  the  earth  daily,  and,  like  Antaeus, 
the  famed  wrestler  of  old.  who  gained  new  life  and  vigor  every  time  he  touched  his  mother 
earth — I  allude  to  the  great  body  of  the  laboring  colored  men  in  Mississippi — I  say  there 
is  no  hostility,  there  is  no  difference  between  them  and  the  white  people,  and  they  are 
rapidly  coming  together,  and  it  is  the  height  of  cruel  barbarity  to  attempt,  by  thrusting 
political  differences  between  them,*to  create  anew  dissensions  which  now,  happily,  are 
rapidly  passing  away. 

It  has  been  said,  sir,  that  the  colored  race  was  true  to  the  Union  :  that  some  of  its 
men  fought  on  the  side  of  the  Union.  I  am  prepared  to  assert  for  the  great  body  of 
that  race  that  they  had  an  ordeal  presented  to  them,  one  never  before  presented,  and 
it  was  this  :  We  were  battling  for  what  they  considered  and  what  others  considered  to 
be  their  perpetual  subjugation.  The  Union  arms,  if  successful,  would,  as  a  necessary 
incident,  free  them.  Yet,  sir,  the  great  body  of  the  working  colored  race  stood  true 
and  firm  by  the  side  of  those  with  whom  they  had  been  reared,  and  upon  whose  places 
they  had  been  born.  They  stood  by  us  during  the  trials  and  tribulations  and  hardships 
and  bloodshed  of  the  long  civil  war.  They  stood  by  us  when  temptations  of  an  ex- 
traordinary character  were  offered  for  their  desertion.  They  stood  by  us  when  there 
was  not  a  meal  in  the  larder  to  be  spread  for  the  common  family.  They  stood  by  us 
when  the  lambent  flames  of  the  incendiary  licked  our  very  house-tops  and  the  crackling 
rafters  crumbled  into  ashes  upon  our  desolated  hearth-stones.  It  is  a  slander  upon 
that  race  to  say  they  were  false  to  the  soil  upon  which  they  had  been_  reared  and  false 
to  the  people  with  whose  fortunes  their  own,  whether  for  good  or  for  ill,  had  constantly  , 
been  blended.  , 

That  is  their  history  during  the  war  ;  and  since  it  no  dissension  would  have  existed, 
no  differences  would  have  been  created,  if  tkey  had  been  left  alone  to  act  for  them- 
selves, if  they  had  been  left  free  to  make  their  own  choice.  But  loyal  leagues  were 
formed,  and  it  is  a  well-known  fact  in  the  history  of  the  country  that  the  reconstruc- 
tion acts,  which  have  sometimes  been  so  much  lauded,  had  only  one  particular  and  es- 
pecial fault  about  them,  and  that  was  that  they  attempted  to  reconstruct  a  State  and 
leave  the  people  out.  [Laughter.]  All  such  reconstruction  as  that  failed  ;  and  the 
very  moment  the  mailed  hand  of  the  Government  was  taken  off  those  States,  the  very 
moment  the  people  were  allowed  to  act  freely  for  themselves,  that  very  moment  1)hey 
asserted  the  right  of  local  self-government,_  and  the  colored  people  united  with  the 
white  people  for  the  purpose  of  establishing  it. 

It  has  been  sometimes  said,  sir,  that  it  was  necessary  you  should  have  the  military 
in  the  Southern  States.  For  myself,  I  have  never  had  any  particular  reason  to  find 
fault  with  its  existence  there,  for  I  have  generally  found  them  fair-minded  in  their 
action.  In  the  city  in  which  I  live  they  are  encamped  upon  ray  old  homestead,  and 
have  been  ever  since  the  war  closed.  The  gentleman  who  is  now  commandant  of  the 
post  there,  Major  Allyn,  in  the  progress  of  the  last  campaign,  having  application  made 
to  him  to  loan  a  cannon  to  the  rival  political  parties,  did  so  to  the  Republican  party, 
and  he  did  the  same  thing,  in  the  spirit  of  even-handed  justice  and  generosity,  to  the 
Conservative- Democratic  party.  For  that  act  he  was  court  mariialed  and  tried,  but  I 
am  happy  to  say  that  the  spirit  of  even-handed  justice  and  fair-mindedness  which  he 
had  displayed  toward  the  people  in  the  midst  of  whom  he  held  military  position  was 
displayed  by  the  commission  which  tried  him,  and  he  was  acquitted.  Who  was  the  chief 
accuser?  A  man  by  the  name  of  G.  K.  Chase,  of  New  York,  who  was  sent  down  by 
the  Department  of  Justice,  as  he  testified  on  the  trial,  for  the  purpose  of  acting  as  a 
ecret  agent  in  the  supervision  of  the  elections  in  the  State  of  Mississippi.  You  had 
provided  by  an  act  of  Congress  for  supervisors  in  the  various  congressional  districts^ 
and  under  that  authority  the  district  judge  had  appointed  a  general  supervisor  for  ttre 


8 


bfate,  and  the  supervisor  for  the  State  had  appointed  supervisors  for  every  congressional 
district.    Yet  his  report  to  the  "Department  of  Justice  has  never  been  made  public. 

Not  one  single  complaint  has  been  made  by  any  supervisor  of  any  congressional 
elections  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  Mississippi  that  there  was  untairness  in 
the  elections.  Ay,  and  more  than  that,  though  we  have  a  statute,  simple  and  plain  in 
its  provisions,  giving  the  remedy  to  any  man  who  thinks  he  has  been  unjustly  defrauded 
of  his  position  to  test  that  question  primarily  before  a  justice  of  the  peace,  and  by  ap- 
peal to  the  superior  courts,  there  was  not  a  contest  there ;  from  the  highest  general 
officer  who  was  elected  down  to  the  constable  there  was  not  a  single  contest  throughout 
the  length  and  breadth  of  the  entire  State,  not  one.  Can  it  be  said,  therefore,  there  is 
any  truth  in  the  assertion  that  fraud,  or  force,  or  intimidation  was  exercised  anywhere? 
On  the  contrary,  Mr.  Chairman,  in  the  counties  east  of  Pearl  driver  there  is  not  a  Re- 
publican, white  or  black,  who  will  attempt  to  say  there  was  anything  like  intimidation 
or  fraud,  not  one.  And,  more  than  that,  if  you  take  every  one  of  the  counties  in 
which  there  is  the  slightest  allegation  of  any  irregularities  on  the  day  of  election,  and 
you  throw  them  out  of  the  count,  or  give  them  the  majority  the  Republican  party  ob- 
tained at  the  previous  election,  it  would  not  change  the  result. 

I  say,  therefore,  you  have  this  spectacle  presented  in  the  face  of  the  proof  offered  by 
Governor  Ames  and  his  coadjutors — you  have  the  significant  fact  that  there  is  not  a 
single  supervisor,  though  appointed  by  your  district  judge  in  every  congressional  dis- 
trict, who  has  reported  any  unfairness  in  a  single  contest  anywhere.  And  yet  you  have 
the  general  assertion  that  fraud  and  force  and  violence  were  resorted  to  for  the  purpose 
of  affecting  the  result.  I  think,  sir,  this  is  a  sufficient  answer  to  whatever  evidence 
may  be  attempted  to  be  given  on  this  subject. 

If  let  alone,  sir,  the  relations,  the  natural  relations  between  the  colored  man  and  the 
white  man  of  the  South  will  adjust  themselves.  I  have  said  it  is  not  a  political  ques- 
tion. I  have  said  that  you  could  not  make  it  a  political  question  ;  that  you  could  not 
put  upon  the  statute-book  any  law  which  would  affect  those  relations;  on  the  con- 
trary, the  two  races  must  work  out  the  relations  which  will  exist  between  them  for 
themselves.  They  are  rapidly  doing  so.  And  it  is  just  and  due  to  the  colored  race  to 
say  that,  taking  them  in  the  mass,  uninfluenced  by  bad  advisors,  uncontrolled  by  men 
who  think  that  the  blood  of  twenty-five  or  thirty  of  them,  in  the  language  of  Governor 
Ames,  would  be  a  service  to  the  republican' pa.rty — leaving  them  free  from  the  influence 
of  such  men  and  such  control,  they  are  a  peacable,  quite,  hard- working,  industrious 
community.  And  so  far  from  its  being  true  that  the  old  white  people  of  the  country  are 
disposed  to  be  oppressive  to  them  in  any  particular,  I  can  only  say  that  in  my  own  con- 
gressional district,  and  on  my  own  farm  where  I  have  some  that  were  formerly  my 
slaves  and  some  who  were  not,  I  never  even  mentioned  to  one  of  them  privately  that  I 
was  a  candidate  for  Congress.  And  such  I  believe  was  the  temper  and  disposition  of 
other  candidates  everywhere.  And  never  at  any  time  did  I  make  any  speech  in  that  or 
in  any  other  canvass  since  they  have  been  invested  with  the  ballot  by  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States;  never  have  I  said  that  they  did  not  have  as  full,  as  free,  as  per- 
fect, as  unquestioned  a  right  to  vote  against  me  as  to  vote  for  me.  And  so  with  all  the 
other  candidates. 

When  you  take  into  consideration  the  fact  that  there  never  was  a  representative  of 
that  race  in  this  body  until  after  the  war  closed  and  these  800,000  freedmen  had  been 
made  voters,  you  have  presented  a  significant  fact.  If  the  republican  party  of  the 
North,  or  any  of  the  people  of  the  North,  whether  republicans  or  democrats,  had  had 
this  extraordinary  regard  for  the  interests  and  the  welfare  and  the  intelligence  of  the 
colored  race,  why  was  it  never  manifested  long  before  the  results  of  the  war? 

In  Massachusetts  the  colored  man  has  been  a  freedman  for  nearly  a  hundred  years. 
State  by  State  all  the  States  of  the  North  manumitted  their  slaves  at  successive  periods, 
down  to  New  Jersey,  whose  last  act  of  manumission  was  in  1846,  and  that  under  the 
apprentice  system  which  gave  to  the  old  owner  the  right  to  the  possession  of  the  ser- 
vices of  the  male  under  twenty-eight  years  and  of  the  female  until  she  was  twenty-one 
years  of  age.  In  New  Jersey,  where  I  chanced  at  one  time  for  some  years  to  be  my- 
self, and  in  Massachusetts,  where  I  chanced  to  be  at  one  time  for  two  years,  I  saw  a 
great  many  intelligent  colored  men.  In  Massachusetts  the  white  men  stand  to  the  col- 
ored men  as  a  hundred  to  one,  according  to  the  census  of  1870.  In  New  Jersey,  the 
last  State  to  manumit,  the  white  men  stand  to  the  colored  men  as  forty- six  and  one- 
half  to  one  The  colored  man  was  unimportant  in  influence  ;  he  was  greatly  in  the 
minority  ;  and  yet,  in  both  of  those  States,  in  Massachusetts  and  New  Jersey,  I  knew 
a  great  many  intelligent,  educated  colored  men.  And  it  was  the  same  in  all  the  North- 
ern States  through  which  it  was  my  fortune  to  travel,  and  yet,  during  my  long  residence 
in  New  Jersey  and  during  my  two  years'  residence  in  Cambridge,  1  never  saw  or  beard 


9 


of  a  colored  man  being  a  governor  of  one  of  tkose  States,-  a  representative  in  its  Legis- 
lature, or  presiding  on  its  bench  as  a  circuit  judge  or  even  as  a  justice  of  the  peace. 
Why  was  this?  Why  did  the  country  awake  at  once  to  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
these  people  were  a  power  in  the  land  and  that  they  had  an  intelligence  which  ought  to 
be  invoked  in  the  interests  of  their  own  race?  In  no  northern  State,  whether  demo- 
cratic or  republican,  did  they  ever  attempt  to  send  one  colored  man  here  as  a  Repre- 
sentative. 

I  say,  therefore,  that  when  this  wonderfully  aroused  affection  and  regard  for  the  col- 
ored man  is  assumed  to  be  a  virtue  on  the  part  of  a  particular  party,  the  question  arises 
how  it  never  asserted  itself  before.  And  it  is  a  striking  refutation  of  the  idea  that  there 
was  any  peculiar  love  or  affection  among  Northern  men  toward  this  race  of  people 
rather  than  among^Southern  men.  We  had  a  very  striking  illustration  of  the  force  of 
this  a  short  time  after  the  war  closed.  I  chanced  to  be  traveling  from  the  Mississippi 
river  to  my  home,  and  I  took  my  seat  in  a  car  in  the  vicinity  of  a  good  looking  gentle- 
man and  a  still  better-looking  lady._  In  the  progress  of  the  journey  to  the  capital  we 
got  into  conversation,  and  the  relations  between  the  two  races,  their  rights  and  interests 
and  the  duties  of  one  toward  the  other,  became  the  subject  of  conversation.  He  pro- 
fessed very  great  regard  for  the  colored  race  ;  he  manifested  profound  sensitiveness  for 
their  rights  to  be  recognized  in  the  Southern  States,  and  as  he  conversed  with  me  the 
lady  who  sat  by  his  side,  and  who  had  been  iBashing  her  black,  beautiful  eyes  on  me 
occasionally,  when  his  enthusiasm  became  very  great,  turned  to  me,  and  with  great 
emphasis,  and  with  that  power  of  expression  which  belongs  to  the  female  alone,  and 
which  is  denied  to  our  sex,  said  :  "This  gentleman  is  my  husband,  and  so  far  from 
having  such  affection  for  the  colored  race  as  he  professes,  he  is  really  prejudiced  so 
bitterly  against  them  that  he  will  never  allow  me  to  employ  one  of  them  in  our  house- 
hold even  to  wait  upon  us." 

I  assert  here  for  my  own  State  that  in  the  coming  election,  as  in  the  past,  the  Demo- 
cratic and  Conservative  party,  in  the  ranks  of  which  I  assert  that  there  are  to-day  thous- 
ands of  colored  men  as  earnest,  as  warm,  and  as  voluntary  in  their  support  of  that  party 
as  any  white  man — I  say  in  the  coming  election,  as  in  the  past,  profoundly  convinced 
that  the  great  material  interests  of  the  country  and  the  true  prosperity  of  the  races  are  so 
indissolubly  united  that  you  might  as  well  undertake  to  sever  a  limb  from  the  body  or 
allow  it  to  be  attacked  with  gangrene  and  expect  that  the  warm  currents  of  blood  would 
rush  from  the  heart  to  the  extremity  and  from  the  extremity  back  to  the  heart,  as  to 
suppose  that  this  country  can  be  in  a  healthy  condition  if  there  is  a  perpetual  warfare 
kept  up  by  designing  politicians  between  the  two  races  ;  but,  if  we  are  left  alone  and 
allowed  to  adjust  the  normal  and  legitimate  relations  between  the  races,  I  believe  that 
peace  will  prevail  within  our  borders,  and  with  it  that  prosperity  which  once  distin- 
guished us  as  a  nation. 

I  know  of  no  man  within  the  limits  of  my  State  who  has  expressed  the  wish  to  change 
the  political  condition  of  the  colored  race  within  my  State  in  any  respect.  We  have 
manifested  this  in  the  most  extraordinary  manner  by  the  taxes  we  have  submitted  to 
for  the  purpose  of  educating  our  colored  citizens.  Are  you  aware  of  the  fact  that  in 
many  of  the  Northern  States  when  taxes  were  raised  for  school  purposes  the  taxes  were 
distributed  to  the  colored  persons  in  proportion  to  what  they  paid  in  taxes,  but  we  in 
Mississippi  have  willingly  allowed  all  our  property  to  be  taxed,  and  that  the  colored 
people  shall  have  an  equal  share  in  the  establishment  of  common  schools  for  the  edu- 
cation of  their  children, 

I  have  before  me  a  synopsis  of  the  laws  passed  in  various  Northern  States  designed 
for  the  protection  of  those  States  against  a  class  of  people  who  might  become  a  charge 
upon  them. 

I  am  indebted  for  this  synopsis  to  the  very  intelligent  chairman  of  the  Democratic 
Committee  of  my  State,  General  J.  Z.  George,  who  made  this  synopsis  to  show  what 
had  been  the  temper  and  what  the  character  of  the  laws  passed  in  the  Northern  States 
at  the  time  of  the  emancipation  of  their  slaves. 

It  is  said  that  the  same  force  and  fraud  and  intimidation  existed  in  regard  to  the 
white  republicans  of  the  South.  I  do  not  like  to  refer  to  myself,  but  I  may  be  permit- 
ted to  say  that  I  labor  under  the  profound  conviction  to-day  that  in  the  interest  of 
good  government,  and  impelled  by  the  necessity  of  having  good  government  for 
our  people,  many  of  the  northern  men,  the  republicans  who  have  gone  to  our  State 
for  the  purpose  of  lending  their  energies  and  capital  for  the  building  up  of  our  waste 
places— that  many  of  the  prominent  republicans  in  my  district  gave  me  their  votes 
for  the  position  I  hold  upon  this  floor.  Were  they  intimidated?  Will  any  gen- 
tleman go  to  Mississippi  and  dare  to  say  that  they  were  ?  They  stand  there  to- day  de- 
siring good  government,  preferring  it  to  party,  believing  that  good  government  is  better 


10 


than  the  domination  of  a  party,  and  that  we  there  labor  under  the  same  necessity  which 
existed  everywhere  for  letting  the  laboring  man  alone,  as  was  so  strikingly  illustrated 
by  the  distinguished  gentleman  from  Pennsylvania  [Mr.  Kelley]  in  a  debate  in  the 
last  Congress.  Speaking  on  the  27th  of  February,  1875,  on  the  proposition  to  lay  forty 
millions  more  of  taxes  on  the  people,  Judge  Kelley  said : 

The  falling  off  in  the  revenue  demonstrates  the  poverty  of  the  people.  They  do  not  contribute  to 
the  Treasury,  because  they  cannot  supply  their  wants.  They  are  unable  to  consume  dutiable  and 
taxable  commodities,  because  we  have  by  our  legislation  paralyzed  their  productive  power.  It  is 
a  maxim  of  mine,  and  I  cannot  too  often  repeat  it,  that  a  prosperous  people  not  only  supply  their 
wants,  but  gratify  their  desires;  while  a  people  suffering  as  the  laboring  people  of  this  country 
now  are  not  only  do  not  gratify  their  desires,  but  are  unable  to  provide  themselves  with  the  neces- 
saries of  life- 
More  than  a  million  working  people  of  the  country  are  in  want'.  In  one  week,  ay,  in  the  first 
five  days  of  ono  week,  it  is  recorded  that  forty-one  sober,  industrious,  and  honest  workingmen  in 
my  own  city  begged  the  privilege  of  passing  the  winter  in  the  house  of  correction  rather  than  starve 
or  steal. 

This  was  the  legitimate  reaction  from  a  system  of  laws  which  strains  the  Constitution. 
You  cannot  do  it  without  a  fearful  reaction  such  as  has  been  produced  now — a  reaction 
which  to-day  stretches  over  your  broad  and  beautiful  country  of  the  North.  We  must 
have  peace  and  order  and  good  government,  general  as  well  as  local.  You  must  have 
confidence  between  man  and  man.  You  must  have  corruption  ruled  out  of  high  places. 
You  must  have  the  miserable  pretenders  who  have  been  sent  into  the  Southern  States 
to  establish  governments  there  banished  from  their  borders.  You  must  allow  the  hon- 
est hard-working  yeomanry  of  the  land,  black  and  white,  assert  their  rights  to  good 
governments,  to  common  governments,  both  general  and  local. 

In  my  opinion,  this  cannot  be  done  by  any  one  party.  It  could  not  be  done  by  the 
Dem'ocratic  party  to-morrow  if  it  had  possession  of  the  other  branch  of  the  National 
Legislature,  of  the  Executive,  and  of  all  the  Departments.  The  question  must  be  solved 
by  the  two  races  themselves — by  the  natural  condition  of  reliance  and  dependence  of 
the  one  race  on  the  other  that  exists  there.  This  alone  is  the  secret  of  the  solution. 
No  legislation  adopted  by  the  one  party  or  by  the  other,  in  my  humble  judgment,  can 
accomplish  it. 

I  have  already,  Mr.  Chairman,  trespassed  longer  upon  the  attention  of  the  commit- 
ee  than  I  intended,  and  will  now  bring  my  remarks  to  a  close. 


APPENDIX. 


Synopsis  of  laws  passed  by  the  various  States  of  the  Union  at  the  respective 
periods  of  manumission^  prepared  by  General  J.  Z.  George,  referred  to  by  the  gentle- 
man from  Mississippi  [Mr.  Hooker]  in  his  speech  of  the  15th  June,  1876  ; 

MASSACHUSETTS. 

Negroes  were  not  allowed  to  be  enrolled  in  the  militia,  but  they  were  required  to 
attend  the  calls  of  the  militia  companies,  and  to  do  such  work  as  might  be  required  of 
them  by  the  officers.    (Revision  Massachusetts  Laws  of  1814,  page  386.) 

Negroes  and  mulattoes  were  prohibited  from  entertaining  any  negro  or  mulatto  ser- 
vants under  a  penalty  of  five  shillings  for  each  offense,  and  if  any  were  unable  to  pay 
the  fine  he  was  to  work  in  the  house  of  correction  at  hard  labor  for  two  days  for  each 
shilling  of  the  fine.  (lb.) 

The  statute  recited  in  its  preamble  that  the  great  charge  and  inconvenience  have  oc- 
curred in  divers  towns  by  releasing  and  setting  free  negroes  and  mulatto  slaves,  and 
then  enacted  that  no  such  persons  shall  be  freed  until  bond  and  security  be  first  given 
to  indemnify  the  town  against  such  negro  or  mulatto  becoming  a  charge  on  the  town, 
(lb.,  page  745.) 

In  the  same  book,  page  748,  it  is  enacted  that  if  a  negro  or  mulatto  shall  strike  any 
person  of  the  English  or  other  Christian  nation,  he  shall  be  punished  by  a  severe  whip- 
ping, at  the  discretion  of  the  justice. 

And  at  the  same  place  it  is  enacted  that  no  one  of  the  English,  Scot,  or  other  Chris- 
tian nation  shall  intermarry  with  a  negro  or  mulatto,  and  a  penalty  of  £50  ($250)  is  im- 
posed on  any  minister  who  shall  solemnize  such  marriage.  In  the  Revision  of  the 
Statutes  of  1836,  page  475,  intermarriage  between  whites  and  blacks  is  again  prohib- 
ited. 

RHODE  ISLAND. 

In  the  Revision  of  the  Statutes  of  1822,  page  371,  intermarriage  between  whites  and 
blacks  was  prohibited,  and  such  a  marriage  declared  void.  This  provision  was  contin- 
ued in  the  Revision  of  1857,  page  312,  and  also  in  the  Revision  of  1872— eight  years 
after  the  war  closed— page  325  ;  and  a  person  joining  such  persons  in  marriage  was 
liable  to  a  fine  of  $200.    Whites  only  allowed  to  vote.    (Revision  of  1822,  page  89.) 

Granting  license  for  keeping  taverns,  ale-houses,  victualing-houses,  cook-shops, 
oyster-shops,  and  for  retailing  liquors  were  prohibited  to  "  any  colored  or  blacky  per- 
sons ;  nor  shall  any  white  person  duly  licensed  suffer  any  black  or  colored  person  in  his 
employ,  or  his  agent,  to  sell  any  liquor  whatever,  under  the  penalty  of  forfeiting  such 
license."    (Revision  of  1822,  page  296.) 

In  the  same  book,  page  444,  it  is  enacted  "  that  if  any  free  negro- or  mulatto  shall 
keep  a  disorderly  house,  or  entertain  any  person  at  unreasonable  hours,  or  in  an  ex- 
travagant manner,"  the  town  council  may  break  up  the  house-keeping  of  such  negro 
or  mulatto,  and  bind  him  out  to  serve  for  two  years. 

Slavery  was  abolished  in  Rhode  Island  in  1784  ;  but  their  children  were  continued 
under  the  control  of  their  owners  until  they  were  twenty-one  years  of  age. 

By  the  constitution  of  1844  only  citizens  of  the  United  States  were  allowed  to  vote. 
This  excluded  negroes,  as  they  were  not  citizens  then. 

CONNECTICUT. 

Slavery  was  abolished  in  1784,  by  declaring  free  all  born  of  slave  mothers  after  that 
time;  but  these  children  were  bound  to  serve  their  owners  until  the  age  of  twenty-five 
years.  Those  born  before  were  continued  in  slavery.  (See  .la.ckson  vs.  Bullock,  2 
Connecticut  Reports,  page  38. 


12 


In  Revision  of  1821  (see  constitution  of  Connecticut,  article  6)  only  whites  were  al- 
lowed to  vote. 

The  amended  constitution  of  1845  contains  the  same  provision,  (see  Revision  of  1849, 
page  47  ;)  and  this  provision  remains  in  words  in  the  constitution  of  Connecticut  up  to 
the  present  time.  A  negro  cannot  now  vote  in  Connecticut  except  by  virtue  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States :  the  State  Constitution  prohibits  it.  (See  Revision 
of  1875,  page  52,  L.  11.) 

Negroes  were  prohibited  from  serving  in  the  militia  in  Revision  of  1839,  page  426  ; 
in  the  Revision  of  1849,  page  652  ;  in  the  Revision  of  1866,  page  557  ;  and  this  prohi- 
bition was  left  out  only  in  the  Revision  of  the  present  year,  (1875,)  page  111. 

VERMONT. 

Only  whites  allowed  to  serve  in  the  militia.  Revision  of  1825,  page  611.  This  pro- 
vision continued  in  the  Revision  of  1840,  page  577,  and  Revision  of  1850,  page  630, 
and  left  out  in  Revision  of  1870,  page  645. 

NEW  HAMPSHIRE. 

Whites  only  allowed  in  militia.  Revision  of  1853,  page  197.  I  find  no  statute  later 
in  date  than  this.  . 

MAINE. 

Marriages  between  whites  and  negroes  prohibited.  Revision  of  1841,  page  359. 
Continued  in  Revision  of  1857,  page  390,  and  also  iu  Revision  of  1871,  page  483. 

Citizens  of  United  States  only  voters,  excluding  blacks,  as  they  were  not  citizens. 
(Constitution  of  Maine  of  1819,  article  2.) 

PENNSYLVANIA. 

Slavery  was  abolished  in  this  State  in  1780.    (Dunlap  Revision,  pa.ge  126.) 

The  act,  after  an  eloquent  recital  of  the  wrongs  of  slaves  and  the  evils  of  'slavery, 
and  a  reference  to  the  happy  condition  of  the  whites  in  escaping  the  slavery  to  which 
they  had  been  doomed  by  the  British,  and  declaring  the  whites  by  long  experience  had 
been  weaned  from  prejudices,  and  that  their  hearts  were  now  filled  with  benevolence 
and  kindness  toward  all  men,  and  that  injustice  to  the  unhappy  slaves,  they  now  pro- 
ceeded to  act,  then  merely  set  free  those  who  shall  be  born  within  the  State  after  the 
passage  of  the  act,  retaining  all  others  in  slavery,  with  a  proviso,  however,  that  all  so 
born  and  set  free  should  be  servants  and  bound  to  their  owners  till  they  were  twenty- 
eight  years  of  age. 

Negroes  and  mulattoes  were  excluded  from  militia  duty  till  187  .  (Purdon's 
Digest,  page  1269;  Brightley's,  Purdon's  Digest,  page  1040.)  They  were  not  allowed 
to  serve  on  a  jury.  (Brightley's,  Purdon's  Digest,  page  829.)  Whites  only  were 
allowed  to  vote  till  1870. 

NEW  JERSEY. 

Act  passed  February,  1820,  for  the  gradual  abolition  of  slavery  made  free  every  child 
born  of  a  slave  since  July  4,  1804,  but  provided  that  such  child  should  remain  the 
servant  of  the  owner  of  his  or  her  mother  as  if  bound  to  service  by  the  overseers  of  the 
poor  until  the  male  children  were  twenty-eight  and  the  female  twenty-one  years  of  age. 
(Revision  of  1847,  page  360.) 

On  the  18th  of  April,  1846,  (same  revision,  page  380,)  an  act  was  passed  to  abolish 
slavery  finally,  and  every  slave  then  in  the  State  was  made  free  ;  but  every  such  freed- 
man  was  made  an  apprentice  to  his  then  owner,  who  was  only  allov/ed  to  discharge  him 
from  service  by  procuring  the  certificate  of  the  overseer  of  the  poor  and  of  two  justices 
that  such  apprentice  proposed  to  be  freed  was  of  sound  mind  aud  capable  of  making  a 
support,  or  without  such  certificate  if  the  owner  would  give  bond  with  security  that  the 
negro  would  not  become  a  charge  on  the  county. 

The  children  of  these  apprentices  were  to  be  supported  by  their  masters  till  they 
were  six  years  old  ;  and  then,  in  all  cases,  were  to  be  bound  as  poor  children  by  the 
overseers  of  the  poor,  the  owner  having  the  preference.  Persons  enticing  away  such 
apprentices  were  declared  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor  and  fined  $100;  and  persons  har- 
boring such  apprentices  were  made  liable  to  pay  $1  for  each  day  they  so  harbored 


13 


them.  Only  whites  were  allowed  to  be  enrolled  in  the  militia,  (Ibid.,  V45,)  and  only 
whites  were  entitled  to  vote.  (See  constitution  of  1847,  article  2.)  This  constitution, 
as  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  learn,  has  not  been  changed. 

OHIO. 

Act  passed  in  1804  prohibited  after  June  1  of  that  year  any  black  or  mulatto  persons 
from  settling  or  residing-  in  the  States  v;ithout  a  certificate  of  freedom  :  any  person 
employing  such  a  person  without  certificate  shall  be  fined  from  $10  to  S50'.  (Revision 
of  1847,  page  592.)  In  1807  an  act  was  passed  prohibiting  any  negro  or  mulatto  from 
settling  in  the  State  unless  he  shall,  within  twenty  days  after  his  arrival,  give  bond  with 
two  or  more  freehold  sureties  in  the  penalty  of  $500  conditioned  for  the  good  behavior 
of  such  negro  or  mulatto,  and  to  pay  for  his  support  in  case  he  shall  be  unable  to  sup- 
port himself ;  and  if  any  negro  or  mulatto  shall  immigrate  into  the  State  without  com- 
plying with  the  above,  it  was  made  the  duty  of  the  overseer  of  the  poor  to  remove  him 
as  a  pauper.  (Ibid.,  page  693.)  And  if  any  such  persons  shall  employ,  harbor,  or 
conceal  such  a  negro  or  mulatto  who  has  not  complied  with  the  above,  he  shall  forfeit 
$100,  and  be  liable  to  support  the  same  in  case  he  becomes  unable  to  do  so.  (Ibid.) 

In  the  same  acta  negro  pr  mulatto  was  made  an  incompetent  witness  in  any  case  in 
which  a  white  person  was  interested.    (Ibid. ) 

The  constitution  of  Ohio  in  force  when  the  war  ended  confined  the  right  to  vote  to 
the  whites.     (Constitution  of  Ohio,  article  5,  section  1.) 

.  In  1859  an  act  was  passed  directing  judges  of  election  to  reject  all  voters  who  had  a 
distinct  and  visible  admixture  of  African  blood.  (Swann  and  Crutchfield's  Statutes  of 
Ohio,  page  549.) 

Judges  receiving  such  votes  were  made  liable  to  a  fine  of  from  $100  to  $500  and  to 
imprisonment  from  one  to  six  months,  and  any  person  aiding  or  advising  such  voting 
was  made  liable  to  same  imprisonment.  (Ibid.) 

In  1861  (sse  Swann  and  Sayer's  Revision  of  1868,  page  267)  an  act  was  passed  pro- 
hibiting any  person  of  pure  blood  from  intermarrying  or  having  illicit  carnal  intercourse 
with  any  negro  or  with  any  person  having  distinct  and  visible  admixture  of  African 
blood,  under  penalty  of  a  fine  of  $100  and  imprisonment  for  three  months. 

In  1868  an  act  was  passed  (Swann  and  Sayer,  page  336)  containing  severe  provisions 
against  negroes  voting. 

Negroes  not  allowed  to  serve  as  jurors.  (Laws  of  Ohio  of  1840,  page  27  ;  Swann's 
Revision  of  1859,  page  487  ;  Revision  of  1861,  page  751  ;)  and  the  prohibition  was  in 
force  in  1868. 

INDIANA. 

By  statutes  (see  revision  of  1831,  page  375)  free  negroes  were  prohibited  from  set- 
tling in  the  State  unless  bond  and  security  for  $100  in  each  case  was  given  that  he 
should  not  become  a  charge  on  the  county  as  a  pauper,  and  it  was  provided  that  if 
the  negro  was  convicted  of  any  penal  offense  (however  trivial,  as  an  affray  or  gaming) 
the  whole  bond  was  forfeited.  A  negro  settling  in  the  State,  and  failing  to  give  the 
bond,  was  to  be  hired  out  by  a  public  officer  for  six  months  unless  he  removed  from 
the  State,  and  any  person  hiring  or  harboring  such  a  negro  was  liable  to  be  fined 
$1,000. 

A  negro  or  mulatto  having  one-fourth  negro  blood  could  not  be  a  witness  for  or 
against  a  white  person.    (Ibid.,  page  404.) 

By  the  first  constitution,  adopted  in  1816,  only  whites  were  allowed  to  vote,  (article 
6,  section  1,)  and  only  whites  could  be  in  the  militia,  (article  7,  section  11,)  Marriages 
between  whites  and  blacks  were  prohibited,  and  if  such  persons  should  go  out  of  the 
State  to  marry,  the  marriage  was  void  in  Indiana.  Whites  and  blacks  or  mulattoes 
intermarrying  were  liable  to  imprisonment  in  the  penitentiary  from  one  to  ten  years, 
and  all  persons  aiding  in  or  advising  such  marriage  were  punishable  in  the  same  way, 
and  any  person  concealing  or  harboring  whites  and  negroes  who  had  intermarried,  with 
intent  to  prevent  their  detection  and  punishment,  were  punishable  in  the  penitentiary 
:from  one  to  five  years.    (Ibid.,  page  595  and  970.) 

No  want  of  religious  belief  in  whites  was  a  ground  to  exclude  them  as  witnesses,  but 
blacks  and  mulattoes  were  excluded  in  cases  for  or  against  whites.  (Revision  of  1843, 
page  719.)  This  provi.^ion  was  in  force  at  least  as  late  as  1862.  (Gavin  &  Hord's 
Statutes,  volume  2,  page  166.) 

The  constitution  of  Indiana,  made  in  1851  and  still  remains  as  then  written,  at  least 
as  late  as  1870,  prohibits  negroes  and  mulattoes  from  voting ;  article  5,  section  5,  and 


14 


article  13  of  that  constitution  prohibits  negroes  and  mulattoes  from  moving  to  and  n-g 
tling  in  the  State  j  and  that  constitution  makes  void  any  contract  made  with  negroes  aed 
mulattoes  so  coming  into  the  State  ;  and  all  persons  employing  them  or  encouragins 
them  to  settle  in  the  State  were  liable  to  be  fined  from  S50  to  $500. 

In  the  Revision  of  1852,  page  361,  the  same  provision  heretofore  set  out  as  to  inter- 
marriage between  whites  and  blacks  was  continued. 

By  statute,  negroes  coining  into  the  State  to  settle  in  violation  of  the  constitution  were 
liable  to  be  fined  from  $10  to  $600.  (Revision  of  1852,  page  376.)  And  by  that  consti- 
tution negroes  and  mulattoes  were  excluded  from  the  militia.  (Article  12,  section  1.) 
This  provision  is  still  in  force.    (Davis's  Supplement  of  1870,  page  341.) 

In  1860,  negroes  and  mulattoes  were  not  liable  to  school  taxes,  nor  entitled  to  the  ben- 
efit of  school  funds  in  Indiana.  (Gavin  &  Hords's  Revision,  volume  1,  page  542.)  This 
provision  re-enacted  on  6th  of  March,  1865.    (Davis's  Supplement,  page  440.) 

Very  stringent  laws  were  passed  to  carry  out  that  provision  of  the  constitution  which 
prohibited  negroes  from  settling  in  the  State,  and  these  were  not  repealed  until  22d 
February,  1867,  but  the  constitution  itself  remained  unchanged  in  1870,  and  is  probably 
so  at  this  time. 

ILLINOIS. 

At  an  early  day  Illinois  prohibited  negroes  and  mulattoes  from  settling  in  the  State, 
unless  they  had  certificate  of  freedom  and  unless  each  ©ettler  should  give  bond,  also,  in 
the  penalty  of  $1,000,  with  good  security,  that  he  would  not  become  a  charge  upon 
the  county  as  a  pauper,  and  that  at  all  times  demean  himself  according  to  law  ;  and 
any  person  hiring  or  giving  sustenance  to  a  negro  or  mulatto  settling  in  the  State  in 
violation  of  this  law  was  liable  to  a  fine  of  $500.  (Revised  Statutes,  Illinois,  of  1829, 
page  109.) 

Marriages  between  whites  and  blacks  or  mulattoes  were  prohibited,  and  persons  vio- 
lating the  statute  on  the  subject  were  to  be  whipped  with  thirty- nine  lashes  and  impris- 
oned one  year.  And  persons  solemnizing  such  marriages  or  granting  license  therefor 
were  to  be  fined  $200  and  to  be  thereafter  ineligible  to  hold  office  in  that  State.  (lb.) 
This  was  continued  in  the  Revision  of  1845,  page  353.  In  the  Revised  Statutes  of  1833, 
page  357,  the  same  provision  as  to  settling  in  the  State  of  free  negroes  and  mulattoes 
will  be  found.  In  the  constitution  of  Illinois,  by  which  the  State  was  admitted  into  the 
Union,  slavery  was  abolished,  bat  the  apprenticing  and  binding  out  of  negro  servants 
was  authorized.  Under  this  constitution  there  are  many  stringent  and  severe  provisions 
enacted  to  secure  the  rights  of  the  master  to  the  apprentice  and  to  his  labor,  and  to  en- 
force subordination  of  negroes  and  mulattoes.  These  will  be  found  in  the  Revision  of 
1833,  commencing  on  page  457.  Among  them  is  a  prohibition  against  any  negro  or 
mulatto  being  brought  into  the  State  to  be  set  free,  without  bond  and  security  in  $1,000 
given  to  indemnify  the  counties  against  the  negro  becoming  a  pauper. 

Free  negroes  were  also  required  to  have  certificates  of  freedom,  and  a  person  hiring 
one  without  a  certificate  was  to  pay  $1.50  for  each  day  he  so  hired  him.  Any  negro 
servant  (apprentice)  "  being  lazy,  disorderly,  or  guilty  of  misbehavior  to  his  master  or 
his  family,  was  punishable  with  stripes,  and  if  he  refused  to  work  he  was  to  be  compelled 
thereto,  in  like  manner  and,  moreover,  was  compelled  to  serve  after  his  term  had  ex- 
pired two  days  for  every  one  he  had  refused  to  work.  And  if  he  ran  away  he  was  also 
compelled  to  pay,  after  his  term  was  out,  all  expenses  of  catching  and  bringing  him 
home.  He  was  allowed  to  acquire  'goods  and  money'  only,  not  real  estate,  nor  was  he 
allowed  to  trade  in  any  commodity  without  the  consent  of  his  master.  These  bound  or 
apprenticed  servants  were  also  punishable  in  all  cases  by  whipping  when  free  persons 
were  punishable  by  fine,  (this  provision  was  continued  in  the  Revision  of  1845,)  and  a 
person  permitting  slaves  or  servants  of  color,  to  the  number  of  three  or  more,  to  assem- 
ble at  his  or  her  house  for  the  purpose  of  dancing  or  reveling  was  fined  $20  and  costs, 
and  the  slaves  or  servants  put  in  jail  and  whipped.  This  was  continued  in  the  Revision 
of  1845.  Apprentices  were  also  required  to  be  taught  to  read,  write,  and  to  know  arith- 
metic, but  a  colored  apprentice  was  only  to  be  taught  to  read.  (See  lb.,  page  99.)  This 
provision  was  continued  in  Revision  of  1858,  page  817. 

Negroes  were  not  allowed  to  be  witnesses  for  or  against  the  whites.  In  Revision  of 
1845,  pages  154  and  237,  keepers  of  public  houses  were  prohibited  from  entertaining 
these  servants,  negroes  and  mulattoes,  and  the  provision  against  their  being  witnesses 
where  whites  were  interested  was  continued  with  the  enactment  that  a  mulatto  having 
one-fourth  negro  blood  should  be  excluded,  and  Indians  were  only  excluded  if  they  had 
half  Indian  blood.  And  in  the  same  revision,  page  387,  no  negro  or  mulatto  was  per- 
mitted to  reside  in  the  State  without  a  certificate  of  his  freedom  and  without  giving  bond 


15 


and  surety  in  the  penalty  of  $1,000  against  his  becoming  a  charge  on  the  county,  and 
further,  "that  he  or  she  would  at  all  times  demean  himself  or  herself  in  strict  con- 
formity with  the  laws  of  this  State  that  now  are  or  hereafter  may  be  enacted;"  and 
or  any  violation  of  the  laws,  however  trivial,  the  whole  penalty  of  $1,000  was  re- 
coverable. 

And  any  person  harboring  a  negro  or  mulatto,  or  hiring  or  giving  sustenance,  not 
having  such  certificate,  or  giving  such  bond,  except  he  was  a  resident  when  the  law  was 
passed,  was  to  be  fined  $500.  All  negroes  or  mulattoes  were  compelled  to  register 
their  certificates  of  freedom  and  all  the  names  of  their  families,  &c.  :  and  all  not  having 
such  certificates  were  deemed  runaway  slaves,  and  were  to  be  caught,  advertised,  and 
hired  out.  Every  person  bringing  a  negro  into  the  State  for  the  purpose  ot  freeing  him 
was-finable  $100. 

Living  in  the  state  of  adultery  by  white  with  black,  and  vice  versa,  punished  with  $500 
fine,  and  imprisonment  in  the  penitentiary  for  one  year,  and  for  each  succeeding  offense 
the  parties  were  to  be  punished  doubly,  trebly,  &c. 

By  the  new  constitution  of  1847  only  whites  were  allowed  to  vote  (article  4,  section 
1)  or  to  serve  in  the  militia.  (x\rticle  8.)  Apportionments  for  member  to  the  Legisla- 
ture were  according  to  the  white  population.  (Article    3,  section  8.) 

By  article  14  the  Legislature  was  required  at  its  first  session  to  pass  such  laws  as 
would  efficiently  prevent  free  persons  of  color  from  immigrating  to  and  settling  in  the 
State,  and  to  prevent  effectually  the  owners  of  slaves  from  bringing  them  into  the  Slate 
for  the  purpose  of  setting  them  free. 

In  February,  1858,  ("Revised  Statutes  of  1857,  page  824,)  the  Legislature  carried  out 
this  provision  by  the  most  stringent  legislation,  and  among  them  was  a  prohibition 
against  any  person  bringing  into  the  State  any  colored  person,  slave  or  free,  under  the 
penalty  of  a  fine  of  $500  and  imprisonment  for  one  year. 

And  it  was  also  provided  that,  if  any  negro  or  mulatto,  bond  or  free,  shall  come  into 
the  State  and  remain  ten  days,  with  the  evident  intent  of  residing  there,  he  shall  be 
deemed  guilty  of  a  high  misdemeanor  and  fined  S50,  and  he  shall  be  sold  to  pay  fine 
and  costs  (if  unable  to  pay  themj,  and  his  purchaser  shall  have  the  right  to  compel 
him  to  work  5  and  if,  when  his  term  of  service  under  the  sale  is  out,  he  do  not  leave 
tne  State  in  ten  days,  he  shall  be  fined  $100  and  be  sold  again  ;  and  this  process  of 

e,  it  being  increased  at  every  succeeding  offence  $50,  was  to  go  on  until  the  negro  or 
x??"  .Jatto.died  or  left  the  State. 

^  "TLn  the  same  book,  page  460,  persons  of  color  were  to  have  no  other  interest  in  the 
common-school  taxes  except  such  amount  as  they  paid  themselves. 

The  provisions  hereinbefore  set  out  against  intermarrying  betAveen  whites  and  per- 
sons of  color  (page  519),  against  their  being  witnesses  (pages  257  and  277),  were  con- 
tinued in  the  Eevision  of  1858,  and  were  not  repealed  until  1865.  The  same  provisions, 
also,  as  to  adultery  between  whites  and  blacks  were  continued  in  the  Revision  of  1858 
(page  418),  with  a  special  proviso,  to  prevent  all  misunderstanding,  that  the  law  was 
not  to  apply  where  whites  alone  were  the  guilty  parties- 

The  constitutional  provisions  before  set  out  remained  unchanged  and  unaltered  till 
August,  1870. 

IOWA. 

Constitution  of  1846,  article  6,  allows  only  whites  in  the  militia,  and  by  article  2, 
section  1,  only  whites  were  allowed  to  vote. 

Indians,  negroes,  and  mulattoes  not  allowed  to  give  evidence  in  a  case  where  whites 
are  interested.    (Code  1851,  section  322.)    Not  repealed  until  1860. 

By  the  new  constitution  of  1857,  idiots,  insane  persons,  and  those  convicted  of  infa- 
mous crimes,  and  colored  persons,  not  allowed  to  vote.  (Article  2,  sections  1  and  5.) 
Only  whites  allowed  in  the  militia. 

NEVADA. 

Constitution  framed  in  1864,  allows  whites  only  to  vote.  (Article  2,  Revision  of 
1873,  page  359.)    Whites  only  allowed  in  the  militia. 

MICHIGAN. 

Constitution  of  1835,  only  whites  allowed  to  vote. 

Constitution  of  1850,  article  7,  wiiites,  unnaturalized  foieigners,  who  have  declared 
their  intention  to  become  citizens,  and  civilized  Indians  were  allowed  to  vote,  but  not 
negroes  or  mulattoes.    By  article  17  whites  only  were  allowed  to  serve  in  the  militia. 

By  the  Revision  of  1850  page  950,  intermarriages  between  whites  and  blacks  were 
prohibited.  This  provision  was  re-enacted  in  the  last  code  there,  in  1871,  page  14<»3, 
Negroes  were  allowed  to  vote  and  serve  in  the  militia  in  1870,  but  not  before. 


1 


16 


WISCONSIN. 

Under  constitution,  article  11,  these  persons  were  only  allowed  to  vote:  First 
White  citizens  of  the  United  States.  Second.  White  persons  of  foreign  birth  who  had 
merely  declared  their  intention  to  become  citizens.  Third.  Indians  who  had  been  de- 
clared by  act  of  Congress  citizens,  and  also  any  civilized  persons  of  Indian  descen.' 
Whites  only  were  allowed  in  the  militia.  (Revised  Statutes,  1858,  page  340.)  An  ■ 
only  whites  were  allowed  to  serve  on  juries.    (Ibid,  page  655.) 

MINNESOTA. * 

Constitution  of  ^657  made  white  citizens  and  white  foreigners  voters  as  in  constitu  ' 
tion  of  Wisconsin.    Persons  of  mixed  Indian  blood,  who  had  adopted  the  customs  and 
habits  of  civilization,  and  after  being  examined  by  a  court  and  found  competent,  were 
also  made  voters.    But  negroes  and  mulattoes  were  excluded.    In  the  Hevision  of* 
1858  only  whites  could  be  grand  jurors  (page  749),  and  only  whites  could  serve  in  the 
militia  (page  798). 

OREGON. 

Constitution  of  1857,  whites  only  were  voters.  (Article  2.)  And  the  constitution, 
while  it  prohibited  slavery,  also  prohibited  free  negroes  and  mulattoes  from  coming 
into  the  State,  or  holding  real  estate  there,  or  making  any  contracts  within  the  State,  or 
maintaining  any  suit  in  its  courts,  and  the  Legislature  was  required  to  pass  laws  to 
carry  out  this  provision. 

This  constitution  was  unchanged  in  1872,  and  probably  is  so  at  this  time.  By  the 
Revised  Statutes  of  1872,  page  291,  only  whites  were  allowed  to  serve  on  juries. 

KANSAS. 

Negroes  excluded  from  jury  by  statute  of  1855,  page  445.  Marriages  between  whites 
and  blacks  void.  (lb. ,  page  488.)  Negroes  excluded  from  common  schools.  (lb., 
page  700.)  This  exclusion  remained  until  1868.  Witnesses  declared  not  incompetent 
from  any  want  of  religious  belief;  but  no  negro  or  mulatto,  bond  or  free,  was  allowed 
to  testify  in  a  case,  civil  or  criminal,  wherein  a  white  person  was  interested.  This  is 
omitted  in  the  Revision  of  1868.    (Statute  1855,  page  765.) 

By  the  constitution  of  Kansas,  as  adopted  1859,  negroes  were  not  allowed  to  yoW 
but  naturalized  foreigners  were  (Article  5.)  They  were  excluded  from  the  militia. 
(Article  7.)  Only  electors,  ah  .  they  were  white  only,  were  allowed  to  sit  on  juries, 
(Revision  of  1868,  pages  49,  65,  534.) 


R.  0-  PoLKiNHORN,  Printer,  Washington,  D.  C. 


326.81  Z99B  1868-79  v. 2  no. 26-56 

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